Red Sox vow to stay aggressive on bases

In the wake of Monday’s come-from-behind, walk-off victory over the Phillies, Hanley Ramirez didn’t want to talk about his game-tying home run in the eighth inning.He wanted to talk about baserunning.

More specifically, Ramirez wanted to reassert that Boston would remain aggressive on the basepaths, even if it led to occasional outs, like the one he had made trying to stretch a single into a double the previous night.

“I’ve got to say something about the baserunning,” he said. “That’s how we play the game here. We try to get that extra base all the time. If you get thrown out, this is Boston. You hustle.”

Told on Tuesday that Ramirez had made his fair share of outs on the bases – his six are second on the team, behind only Dustin Pedroia – Ramirez doubled down.

“It’s going to be more now,” he said. “We’re going to be aggressive. My teammates have my back, my coaches have my back. That’s how they want us to play the game.”

Aggressiveness on the bases has been a hallmark of manager John Farrell’s teams, dating back to his time in Toronto. It has paid big dividends in some years (2013 most memorably) while veering into recklessness at others (the 2012 Blue Jays come to mind).

Farrell stresses the proper balance of an aggressive but not reckless mindset.

“We like to push the envelope. We try to force defenses to execute plays and that’s based on scouting. That’s based on a lot of video review. That’s based on certain opportunities or combinations of pitcher-catcher that we may be able to exploit,” he said Tuesday. “To say it’s just a broad brush and we’re going to run with a reckless abandon, no. But it’s to be aggressive and smart, and that can be a fine combination.”

“It’s just like hitting in a lot of ways: You want to be smart, aggressive,” said first-base coach Ruben Amaro, Jr. “You don’t want to run into things haphazardly.”

Coming into this season, the Red Sox talked about upping the ante on the bases to help compensate for the loss of David Ortiz in their lineup. Few teams boast middle-of-the-order hitters as athletic as Boston’s. In Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Andrew Benintendi, the Red Sox have four players capable of 20/20 seasons.

“We may have to do some things a little bit differently,” Amaro said in February. “Getting an extra base and putting ourselves to be in scoring position is probably of paramount importance to us.”

In Monday night’s win, the Red Sox showed the value of that aggressiveness and an extra 90 feet. After Betts led off the third inning with a double, he promptly swiped third base, a move that goes against the baseball convention to never risk making the first out at third. Pedroia’s subsequent groundout brought Betts home for a quick run.

Later in the inning, Mitch Moreland got a good read on a wild pitch to advance to second, allowing him to score when he was aggressively sent home on Benintendi’s two-out single. Benintendi himself took second on the throw home, putting himself in scoring position for Ramirez.

“By getting an extra base, allowing a guy to move a runner or have a little bit more patience at the plate or be a little bit more situational, you can put pressure on a team,” Amaro said. “We’ve seen teams like Kansas City win a World Series because they ran the bases so well and so efficiently. That’s the goal, is to try to take the chances when they’re there and when they call for it.”

Bogaerts and Betts have been the best at it. The two have combined to go 19 for 22 in stolen-base attempts – Bogaerts was nabbed for the first time on a pickoff Tuesday night – while going first to third on singles and first to home on doubles with regularity. Fangraphs ranks them the second- and third-best baserunners in baseball, respectively, behind only Cincinnati speedster Billy Hamilton.

Pedroia and Ramirez are on the other end of the spectrum. They’re 2 for 6 in stolen-base attempts and have been thrown out 10 times on the bases. Fangraphs has Pedroia as the game’s second-worst baserunner this season with Ramirez in the bottom 25 in baseball.

Farrell knows those outs are quantifiable in a way the impact of his team’s overall baserunning aggressiveness isn’t.

“We know that we’re going to run into some outs by virtue of being aggressive. It’s measured. It can be talked about with the number of outs you record,” he said. “But what is not measured, what other opportunities are created by virtue of being that aggressive. So that’s an ongoing approach that we will always employ. But we’ve got to monitor it close and not get reckless with it.”

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